


Time Out

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Illnesses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-04
Updated: 2010-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:24:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's barely moved from the sofa since last night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Out

Sherlock's barely moved from the sofa since last night. Wrapped up in his dressing gown and sounding ten shades of awful. He's spent the afternoon complaining at his laptop and his voice is a cracked and unhappy mess thanks to a heavy cold. It's also shot through with the occasional rasping break, which he uses to cough.

John doesn't think he's seen him eat today. There's been a lot of drinking and some quiet misery, but no eating. He pulls one of the packets of soup out of the cupboard and drops it next to the kettle.

The next time Sherlock doubles over John watches him out of the corner of his eye. After a particularly unpleasant minute of coughing John can actually see Sherlock blinking at his laptop until whatever's on the screen stops being a nasty blur. Then he squints and winces, headache too then.

"I need a tissue," Sherlock says suddenly, half irritated and half miserable. Like his brain is currently torn between disgust and frustration that the body it relies on to carry it between crime scenes is suddenly broken.

John tosses him the box and he drags it within reach between muttered grumblings.

Five minutes later Sherlock makes an irritated noise and starts typing again.

When the water boils John makes him soup, which he will force the man to drink whether he likes it or not. Because having him expire of exhaustion and malnutrition on the sofa is unacceptable.

He crosses the flat with both mugs, edges Sherlock up the sofa until there's room to share, and then hands him one of them.

Sherlock peers into it.

"This isn't tea," he protests.

"No," John says. "It's soup."

Sherlock pulls a face.

"Eurgh, I don't want soup." There's an unhappy whine there.

"You're freezing and you have a chest cold, drink your nice hot soup."

Sherlock eyeballs the mug like it might hold some other disturbing surprise inside. Something that isn't delicious soup. He looks at John, who stares back impassively. Then he gives in, rolls his eyes and drinks it.

"I told you not to stay out all day in the rain last week."

"I had to observe -" Sherlock stops talking when his voice catches in his throat, breaks into coughs, expression quietly venomous that his sudden cold won't let him finish a sentence.

John's enjoying the strange rarity of being able to finish an argument for once.

"You get distracted too easily. Your body runs your brain and not the other way around. You should show it a little respect."

"I will respect it when it stops requiring things and falling to pieces when I'm trying to concentrate - and _leaking_ , dear god." The tissues end up on the arm of the sofa - and then on the floor where Sherlock throws them.

He looks exhausted, and petulant and miserable.

"You should sleep, you've been awake for hours. Your body's just going to give up on you otherwise. It'll make you feel better."

"Sleep is awful," Sherlock protests. "Large portions of my day completely wasted in unproductive unconsciousness."

"Your body won't find it unproductive, it's a complicated machine just like your brain and it will make you regret it if you don’t listen to it occasionally, like now."

Sherlock coughs, hard, painful.

"Definitely now," John says.

Sherlock grumbles something unhappy and puts his soup down. Then he slides sideways until John has a lap full of hair and he's looking down at the long curves and planes that make up the side of Sherlock's face. John's tempted to object that this isn't exactly what he had in mind. That he never intended Sherlock to go to sleep _on him_. That he isn't in fact, furniture. But Sherlock is already complaining quietly about how sleep is going to steal all the ideas in his brain.

"The ideas people have when they're sick are always rubbish anyway," John tells him. His hand is so close to Sherlock's hair that it almost works its way into it by accident. Fingers drifting through the half-warmth of it and carefully pretending that they're not.

"Wake me if Lestrade texts," Sherlock grumbles, one long arm sliding round John's knees, like he's become - in some odd way - an extension of Sherlock's personal space. Sherlock's other hand tosses his phone over his head. It hits the cushion and slides into the gap.

John rolls his eyes. "I'll wake you if Lestrade texts, reluctantly, and not gracefully, but I'll wake you."

Sherlock grunts, then instantly regrets it when it makes him cough again.

"You can tell someone how stupid they are tomorrow," John says quietly.

Sherlock murmurs something vague and faraway.

John drags the blanket from the back of the sofa over the narrow curve of Sherlock's body, then fishes the remote out from behind the cushions.

If nothing else he can watch Spooks without Sherlock telling him what's going to happen.


End file.
